Wednesday, July 10, 2013

I love Twitter for many reasons, but stumbling upon recipe
ideas is probably my favorite. I recently saw a picture posted by my friend,
Mardi from eat. live. travel. write, for something called, “BLT Pasta,” and I
immediately had one of those, “why didn’t I think of that” moments. By the way,
I have four or five of those moments a day.

Since I get so many food wishes for pasta recipes, I figured
I would give it a go. Plus, as luck would have it, I had some arugula in the
fridge just begging to be used. I knew that this combination would taste great,
but I wasn’t prepared for just how great.

I decided to use crème fraiche as the main sauce ingredient,
and it worked beautifully. It was just rich enough, and the fermented cream’s
subtle nuttiness was an excellent foil for the smoky meat, sweet tomatoes, and
bitter greens. As I mentioned in the video, crème fraiche is pretty easy to
find, but of course we’ll encourage you to follow this link and make your own.

If you can’t find or make some, just use heavy cream along
with a squeeze of lemon juice to mimic that essential tanginess. Thank
you Mardi (and Twitter) for the inspiration, and if you’re looking for a quick,
easy, and very summery pasta idea, I hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!

Hey Chef John! I'd like to ask you a question about another recipe, but I wanted to make sure that you could actually see the question, so I'm asking it here. Remember the pad-thai popcorn recipe? I'd like to know if I can use a Thai Fish Sauce which uses anchovies. And what can I use as a substitute for corn syrup? I searched almost every shop in my town, and a few in my country's capital, but I couldn't find it anywhere, and I don't want to leave the other ingredients to waste waiting for a delivery of corn syrup from the US. Thanks!

Any fish sauce would work! Can't answer corn syrup question, just not sure. I'd guess some type of heavy simple sugar syrup would work, but never tried. I'm sure there are ways if you google to get close.

This was so perfect, my boyfriend ate like 2 huuuge portions of this - love our "bacon breakfast" every weekend, and this is the perfect addition for a weeknight dinner after a long, hard workday :) thank you so much!!!

I just made this and it came out great. My picky three year old who doesn't like arugula or tomatoes ate it! Of course, she loves bacon, so that may have something to do with it. I didn't have creme fraiche, so I used 1/3 c heavy cream and 1/3 c sour cream and it came out very nice. Thanks Chef John for sharing such an easy and yummy recipe! I hope you had a nice birthday!

If I can't find cultured buttermilk I plan on using the heavy cream/squeeze of lemon trick. Any idea on how much heavy cream I should use?

Also, back to the cultured buttermilk thing...I've been to a couple of stores and all I can find is 1% buttermilk. Bacterial culture is listed under the ingredients, but, nowhere else on the packaging. Was that cultured buttermilk?? I just figured it would be more prominently labeled if it were cultured vs. regular buttermilk.

This and the salmon in parchment are at the top of my favorites list of Chef John's recipes. I used crema mexicana instead of creme fraiche and it turned out so wonderful. Thanks Chef John, and keep up the good work!

I just tried this recipe and it turned out great, If I say so myself. I look forward to trying something new. Oh! before I go, I made the creme fraiche two days ago. It all came together nicely. Thanks Cynthia

We loved this recipe. The lemon zest was a nice addition and really brightened up the flavor. And it was a good use of my garden cherry tomatoes. I had to substitute sour cream for the creme fraiche, but I looked at your video and will be shopping for uncultured buttermilk tomorrow so that I can keep my own creme fraiche on hand. Thanks!